Dr. De Mars blog on having achieved success in business, sports and academics without ever actually having grown up. Also includes random thoughts on judo, parenting,mixed martial arts, winning & whatever I feel like rambling on about today.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

More Advice on Life: Enjoy it While It Happens

"Advice # 4: Appreciate how great life really is."

Most
of us, if we have 99 things go right will be focused on the one that
went wrong. Maybe that is a good way to make sure we don't leave sponges
inside patients while doing surgery (hey, I got 99 of 'em, what do you
want, perfection?) Still, we could all do with a little more stopping
and thinking how amazing life is instead of grumbling over the small
stuff.

Today, I was really irritated because I had to
fill out some very lengthy forms. I had to fill these out because my
company received a $100,000 grant to develop a prototype of a game to
teach statistics to children who are limited in English proficiency. I'm
super excited about the project and the people I will be working with.
It's a project I wanted to do for a long time and now I finally get to
do it. Yet, I caught myself being all bent out of shape because I had to
fill out a form. How dumb is that?

Someone made the brilliant comment the other day,

The human race would be a lot happier if people didn't forget so quickly all the good things that happen to them.

Too often, we overlook the many good things that are happening all around us because the waiter is too slow bringing our beer while we are having a drink with good friends watching the sun set over the bay.

Because I'm feeling extra blog-generous at the moment, here is a bonus advice:

"Advice # 5: When you go to bed at night, try to count 100 things in your life that are great and that make you grateful."

If
you have trouble going to sleep at night, it's a good bet thinking
about all of the good in your life will relax you and you will never get
to 100 before you fall asleep. Don't tell me you don't have 100 because
that means you ignored advice #4.

Good things don't
have to be winning the lottery, having a book on the New York Times best seller list. It can be having enough food in your
refrigerator, living in a place with good weather, having a nice
comfortable bed with clean sheets on it, having a job to go to in the
morning, someone who brings you coffee in bed, living in a time in
history when women get to vote, we've gotten rid of slavery and invented
the internet.

Right now, I'd go to bed but I'm on a plane headed to Washington.

I'm flying through the sky, using a computer that connects to the Internet through a signal beamed down to earth. How cool is that?

I spent all Saturday in Beverly Hills at a training session on 3D Game Development sponsored by Microsoft (thank you Microsoft, you don't suck nearly as much as I had originally believed). I'm going to be in Washington for three days learning about research done by small businesses around the country. Before that, though, I'm going to take a nap, hit the gym and then analyze the data to see how people who played our games last year improved their math skills. I like data analysis so that is one of the things that make me grateful. See how easy that is?

And the flight attendant is bringing me coffee, for which I am immensely grateful!

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About Me

One world championships, a million dollars in contracts, four degrees, four children - and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Author: Winning on the Ground - available from Amazon & Black Belt and other book places.